Dr. Lydia Martin (email: lydia.martin@up.univ-aix.fr) teaches at the University of Provence, France. Her
area of research is eighteenth-century British literature and the cinematic
adaptations of novels. Her Ph.D. thesis was entitled “Jane Austen’s Novels
on Screen: Aesthetics and Ideology.” She wrote a monograph on Joe
Wright’s Pride & Prejudice (CEFAL, Belgium).

The
eighteenth century is often presented as a time characterized by a leaning
towards reasonable behavior. Reason governed emotions, which were
criticized when escaping its control. Eighteenth-century classicism
established order, decorum and respect of traditions as qualities to be
cultivated in life as in literature. But at the end of the century, as
Jane Austen began writing “First Impressions,” other tendencies emerged and
changed the vision of things. The Romantic movement in literature and the
visual arts privileged feelings and instinctive responses to events. At a
time when literature was torn—according to a simplified view—between
eighteenth-century values and techniques and the new “Romantic” ideology, Jane
Austen could not have found more culturally connoted terms than “Sense” and
“Sensibility” for the title of her first published novel. Although it is
difficult to link her works to any particular mode of vision, two centuries
later Deborah Moggach and Joe Wright seem by the end of their film to have
resolved the ambiguities of her texts: they use the traditional
opposition between Classicism and Romanticism not merely to reflect a literary
and artistic tension of the time but symbolically to suggest the evolution in the
characters’ relationships.

The
promotion of Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudice set the tone: the
choice of a poster bearing a tag line surprising to a Jane Austen reader
announces the parti pris of the film makers: “Sometimes the last
person on earth you want to be with is the one you can’t be without.”
Before the release of the film, two websites1 offered pictures and
screensavers contrasting with the previous versions of Pride and Prejudice: while the video cases and
posters of earlier adaptations suggested antagonism between the heroes, those
chosen to represent the new production emphasized a romantic
relationship. All the ingredients of a love story are present. The
two protagonists are united in a setting and an atmosphere suffused with
Romanticism: at the top of the poster, the heroine, in close up, is decentered
to the right and gazes into the distance; on the left side of the frame Darcy
appears in the background, walking in the fog, exactly as one would imagine
Heathcliff in an adaptation of Wuthering Heights (1847). The focus
is on Elizabeth, who becomes the center of interest, while Darcy is lost in an
artistic blur. The picture at the bottom of the poster—Elizabeth walking
in the open countryside—seems to be taken from the adaptation, although it
presents a sunny sky whereas in the film the weather is ominous. The shot
is divided in two horizontally. Such a choice isolates the main character
who seems lost, deep in the country, an image which constitutes a Romantic
topos. The sun shining above the trees is a reminder of the first and the
last scenes of the film.

However
Romantic this poster might be, the film creates tension by refusing to abandon
totally and immediately Classicism for Romanticism. Such hesitation is to
be found first in the music. The soundtrack is characterized by Classical
echoes and suggestive titles such as “A Postcard to Henry Purcell,” a piece
composed of variations in arpeggios typical of the beginning of
Classicism. The melody “Arrival at Netherfield” is reminiscent of
Mozart’s style, and “Another Dance” is evocative of Lully. Classicism,
however, coexists with Romanticism, as in “Credits,” in which the expressive
melody performed on a clarinet and strings, with a slow rhythm and chords
played in arpeggios, illustrates a transition between the two schools, in the
style of Beethoven. This piece is an appropriate choice for an opening as
it does not betray the Romantic bias of the production. As the story
progresses, Romanticism seems to win the battle through a move towards an
atmospheric and emotive music reminiscent of Schumann and Brahms. The
melodic themes are very expressive, and the addition of a cello in “Darcy’s
Letter” accentuates the pathos.

While the musical accompaniment
wavers between two styles before opting for one, the treatment of settings
shows the same type of uncertainty. Indoor takes and location shots indicate
an evolution from Classicism to Romanticism. The film’s opening with
overlapping birdsong, heard even before the first image appears on screen,
suggests the awakening of nature. The film title appears on a pastoral
picture of British countryside, at dawn. The cinematographer films
Elizabeth in a slightly low-angle shot to present her harmonious relationship
with nature: a high-angle shot would have crushed and isolated her.
The countryside is generally filmed in aesthetic extreme long shots, as when
Elizabeth walks to Netherfield: the shot composition seems to protect the
character, who becomes part of nature, an effect which corresponds to a Romantic
representation of the relationship between nature and man.

The
composition of indoor takes differs from location shots, emphasizing the Classical
architecture of houses whose inhabitants are characterized by their lack of
emotions or feelings, or their difficulty in expressing them. Longbourn
is initially presented in a long sequence shot including fluid panning and
tracking shots. Netherfield is introduced in a different way: the
establishing shot enhances the coldness of the setting. The stiffness of
the characters contrasts with Elizabeth’s appearance when she enters the
drawing-room: Caroline Bingley, Darcy, and two servants are filmed in a
long shot, whereas the medium close-up on Elizabeth introduces a proximity
between her and the viewers. Through the use of scale and distance, the
camera indicates how the lack of naturalness in the Netherfield characters comes
up against Elizabeth’s spontaneity. The architecture of the room is
obviously Neoclassical and suggests a narrowing of the frame, which is enhanced
by the vertical lines structuring the shot; the columns metaphorically
symbolize the characters’ imprisonment, whereas Elizabeth’s walk to Netherfield
in the open air takes place in a setting devoid of vertical lines. In
such a Classical setting, the images play on the depth of field to introduce a Romantic
element: the windows offer an escape and allow the characters to glimpse
the countryside.

The film often shows the characters
looking outdoors through the frame of a window. Their gazes and the
repeated tracking shots of the camera towards a window convey a desire to
escape enclosed spaces. These gazes recall that of the “picturesque”
viewer (in the eighteenth-century meaning of the term), eager for beautiful
landscapes, who sometimes appears in the artist’s painting, as in Francis Cotes’s
Paul Sandby (1761), where Sandby is represented sitting at his
window and drawing the view. Such shots seem to imprison some characters
and symbolize their incompleteness: Darcy is often caught in doorways, a
pattern which points to his difficulty in escaping from the hierarchical social
structure in which he has been brought up; so is Mr. Collins, the frustrated
clergyman. His stiffness when he proposes to Elizabeth illustrates his
lack of Romanticism and absence of real feelings towards the young woman.
His head remains out of the frame, which draws the viewer’s attention to his
gesture as Mr. Collins behaves in accordance with sentimental clichés: he
gives a flower to Elizabeth. His
formality is in keeping with the Neoclassical restraint of emotions via order
and decorum, and his aping of Romantic attitudes makes him an object of
ridicule. The camera remains at a distance, and the long shot
includes a large piece of ham in the foreground. Such a composition
establishes a distance between the characters on screen and the viewers, and
contrasts with Darcy’s first proposal in which the use of shot/reverse shot and
close-ups sets up a game of seduction. When Elizabeth runs away from Mr.
Collins, she takes refuge near the river, in a typically Romantic place where
the water reflects light onto her face.

If
the lighting in Pride & Prejudice creates Romantic effects, it
nevertheless corresponds to classical Hollywood lighting, deprived of realism,
which shows the actors in their best guise. Lighting techniques in the
scene in which Elizabeth plays the piano at Lady Catherine’s request while
Darcy, feeling drawn to her, joins her, enhance the two actors’ beauty.
Their faces are divided between shadow and light, a metaphorical suggestion
that their feelings are mixed. The first proposal scene underlines the
distance they will have to cover in order to discover their true
personalities. In that particular scene, Romanticism coexists with
Classicism, which explains why Darcy will fail in his attempt. The
message is clear: Darcy must become thoroughly Romantic in order to win
Elizabeth. The picturesque, dark green landscape contrasts with the
whitish Neoclassical architecture of the Temple of Apollo and the Palladian
bridge that Elizabeth has just run across. Darcy’s external appearance
transforms him into a Romantic hero, with his wet hair and sad looks, but the Classical
nature of the place announces that he has not yet escaped his hierarchical
conception of society. His proposal is just a formality, hence his
surprise when she refuses. Twice he bends as if to kiss her, but he pulls
himself together when she raises her head towards him as if to encourage his
kiss. The conflicting elements of lighting, setting and movement suggest
their conflicting feelings.

Elizabeth’s
visit to Pemberley is characterized by a Romantic shift illustrating how
Classicism becomes the means to achieve Romanticism. The scene in the
Sculpture Gallery bears an intertextual relation with Rossellini’s Viaggio
in Italia (1954), in which Catherine (Ingrid Bergman) visits the
archaeological museum in Naples. The director uses the same type of shot/reverse
shot between the protagonist and the statues around which the camera turns, thus
translating the development of her thoughts. Surprisingly, Canova’s Neoclassical
marble statues introduce an underlying eroticism and allow Elizabeth to express
her sensuality in the way she gazes at the male nudes. Her gazes are
reproduced in the fluid camera movements, which follow her access to sensual
knowledge, until she reaches Darcy’s marble bust. She then approaches a
hidden side to the young man, whom she glimpses later on as he spontaneously
takes his sister in his arms.

By replacing Darcy’s portrait with
his marble bust, the film insists on the corporal dimension already mentioned
through the few physical contacts between Darcy and Elizabeth. His hand
constitutes a recurring metonymy throughout the production: Elizabeth’s
agitation is obvious as he helps her into the carriage when she leaves
Netherfield; he walks away and his tension becomes visible when he stretches
out his hand, a symbol of his imprisonment; when they meet again at Pemberley,
they engage in small talk, but as she walks away, the camera stops on a shot in
which Darcy’s hand appears in close-up; finally,Elizabeth
kisses his hand at the end of the film. Body language becomes a
substitute for a language that seems inappropriate to the characters unable to
verbally express their strong feelings. At several points, Elizabeth
tries to express what she feels, mostly to her sister Jane, but events prevent
her from doing so: when she runs into the house after her father backs
her in her refusal to marry Mr. Collins, she is about to tell the whole story
to Jane, but the insert shot on Caroline’s letter interrupts her. Later
on she tries to explain to Jane how blind she has been, but Bingley’s return
prevents her from going on, and she sits sadly on her own beneath a tree.

The Romantic bias of the film is shown
through the shifts in the characters’ relationships, the soundtrack andthe treatment of landscape. The
revelation of Lydia’s elopement is followed by a quick return to Longbourn by
night. The carriage crosses desolate lands whose bluish tints are
reminiscent of Romantic paintings, such as those by John RobertCozens, famous for his lyricism and
twilight landscapes that, rather than reproducing reality accurately, instead
express the painter’s feelings. In this sequence, the atmosphere becomes
threatening, and the surroundings are blurred. The same blue tones are
used for the second proposal scene, but the ray of sunshine which pierces the
fog brings to mind J. M. W. Turner’s aesthetics (Norham Castle, Sunrise,
c. 1844; S. Giorgio
Maggiore: Early Morning, 1819; The Fighting
Temeraire Tugged to her Last Berth to be Broken Up, 1838). This
reference to the archetypal Romantic painter is in keeping with the characters’
ultimate success, in a landscape totally devoid of Classical innuendo, in expressing
their emotions.

The most recent Austen film is
suffused with Romantic topoi, a choice which becomes obvious when focusing on
the treatment of the protagonists’ relationships, the soundtrack and the
pictorial influences. The DVD available in Europe offers an alternate
U. S. ending in which Darcy and Elizabeth flirt on a terrace at Pemberley,
by night. The terrace with its Classical architecture overhangs the lake
on which swans are gliding. Despite the ridiculous connotations of its
over-romanticism, this sequence introduces a new ideology. By ending the
film on Mr. Bennet, Joe Wright focused on family and patriarchal society.
The alternate ending of Pride &
Prejudice, however, exhibits an ideology based on individualism: the
couple is established as the nucleus of a new world with fluctuating
identities; Elizabeth becomes the wife of a rich landlord and, as such, attains
more power than she ever had when she was in Longbourn. This Romantic
twist with which the U. S. film endsannounces a new national structure, one that takes into account
individuals’ merits rather than births.